


first flower blooming red

by sixofsextants



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Kissing, Skeletons, Terrible Jokes, Yearning, so many skeletons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:40:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22140433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixofsextants/pseuds/sixofsextants
Summary: On Trentham, Harrowhark Nonagesimus grows flowers and tends to the dead for the Cohort.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 24
Kudos: 291





	first flower blooming red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cassyblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassyblue/gifts).



> This fic was for the Gideon the Ninth discord holiday exchange! My exchange partner Cassyblue requested a Flower Shop AU. Also many thanks to my necromancer, UnseelieWench, for brainstorming and beta reading help.

_Old, frozen skeletons, belabored by the worm,_

_They feel the drip of winter's snow,_

_The passing of the years; nor friends, nor family_

_Replace the dead flowers that hang on their tombs.  
  
~ Charles Baudelaire_

_  
***_

_  
_Red. There was so much red on Trentham. Harrowhark Nonagesimus hated the color more than anything. It was the hue of the sky and the stinging dust that constantly swept up into the black lace of her veil from the crumbled, cracked ground that surrounded the domed Cohort city. It was the rust on the multitude of heavy steel panels that made up the barracks, because a military base was supposed to be functional but not beautiful, and it was the dried blood that crusted the bandages of the bodies of the soldiers shipped back home from aboard shuttles from the distant battlefront.

There had been too many lately, and too quickly. She barely had time to weave the burial wreaths and bury one batch of them before another came, and then another. If not for her, they would have been stuffed into their cramped sepulchre receptacles without ceremony, with a name marker added as an afterthought if they were of high enough rank to be so lucky. 

Harrow knew what it was like to be an afterthought. As the fourth child of the Reverend Father and Reverend Mother of the Ninth House, she’d been nothing more than the fulfilment of an obligation when, long before she’d been born, her parents had decided to sacrifice an entire generation of the Ninth to the Cohort for aid rather than risk fading away and becoming absorbed by the Third or the Fifth Houses. Harrow’s eldest sister, the Reverend Daughter and heir to the house, had been allowed to stay, as well as the Nigenad boy who was pledged as her cavalier. The other children had been shipped off to serve the Cohort as soon as they’d come of age, and Harrow had not seen Drearburh or her family since. Her other sister and brother were out on the frontline, and she, as the baby, as the youngest, had been given the “honor” of staying safely in Trentham tend to the Cohort’s numerous dead. 

It was a duty far beneath that of a black vestal, who belonged in the sacred halls of her ancestors, whose existence should have been entirely devoted to protecting the Locked Tomb. But it was the only duty allowed to her, and she would not embarrass the Ninth. She’d not even drawn breath in the world before her life was bartered away, but a debt the Ninth owed was a debt she owed, and she would see it repaid. 

And so her days were spent in solitude within an old chapel that the Cohort soldiers jokingly referred to as “the flower shop”. It was small and narrow, filled with aisles of flowers that she used to create wreaths to drape across the name plaques in the sepulchre. She had a workbench in one corner where she blessed grave dirt that would be processed into plackets and given to adepts to aid with the unpleasant side effects of space travel.

It was that very task that occupied her one day when, shortly after noon, the door to her shop swung open with a bang so loud that she nearly injured her neck from how quickly she turned toward the disturbance. Through the black lace layers of her veil she watched as a tall, muscular soldier ducked inside and strode purposefully up the aisle of flowers to where Harrow sat, hands now stilled. And there it was again, more hateful, aggressive red — for the soldier was dressed head to toe in Cohort white and scarlet, though her uniform was as mussed as the vibrant shock of short, flame colored hair atop her head.

“Hey,” said the soldier, as Harrow stared, stunned, at the easy smirk on that young and well-formed face. Visitors to her shop were always grim and taut with carefully restrained grief. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen someone smile, for smiles were just as rare back home on the Ninth. Heat suffused her so that it felt like she were standing beneath the glass of the converted hothouse behind the chapel while the light of Dominicus beat down on her. 

“So,” the soldier continued, and as she spoke she casually pulled the smoke-black shades from her eyes, and Harrow once again thought of the sun and how everything was pulled to orbit around it as she beheld two impossibly bright gold irises. “I need a bouquet of flowers.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Harrow said, an automatic reply built as readily in her verbal repertoire as a prayer. But it felt stupid to say it now, and even more so when the soldier’s lips parted and a furrow creased her brow. The encounter became yet another test Harrow had failed, another wasted opportunity to prove herself to be something more than she was.

And then the soldier laughed. It was a rich, uncultured sound, something that would have sounded horribly blasphemous while echoing off of the sanctified stone hallways of Drearburh — but Harrow found that she liked it. She liked it a lot.

“No!” the soldier said, between another laugh and a snort. “They’re for a person. I mean, a living person. A really hot one that I want to impress.”

She waggled her eyebrows, and all Harrow could think of was how much more attractive she had been before she had opened her mouth. Bitterness soured her stomach and sank deep into her bones. Everytime Harrow wanted something, no matter what — or who — she was always too late for it to be hers. Born too late to be the first of her parents’ children, and arrived on Trentham too late to be the first to meet the only person she’d met that sought flowers for the living instead of the dead.

“What’s your name?” Harrow asked.

“Gideon.” Another smirk, this time accompanied by a wink that made Harrow feel very unsteady. “I was thinking roses, because, uh, Seventh House. Do they come in silver?”

Seventh House meant beauty, and poetry, and dramatics all in the form of a delicate, perfumed creature that would demand to be spoiled and constantly attended to. These were all things Harrow hated. If that’s what Gideon wanted, then she really was all looks and no brains, and it should be a comfort to know that immediately and not waste her time with pointless yearning.

But it was Harrow’s curse to always yearn so very much for what she could not have.

“They don’t,” she said, and rose from her seat, gaze already turning away from Gideon’s captivating eyes to survey her inventory, “But I think white will —”  
Gideon reached out and caught the fluttering edges of her veil. It was so sudden, and so unexpected that Harrow stood captive as Gideon lifted it and grinned at her like the complete, absolute moron that she’d just confirmed herself to be.

“Whoaaa,” Gideon said. “You really are a bone witch.”

Harrow snatched her veil free of Gideon’s fingers and whirled breathlessly away. “I am a black vestal of Drearburh, House of the Sewn Tongue, Ninth House to serve the Emperor,” she said with all the icy severity that she could recall from the mouths of the oldest nuns of the Ninth, “and if you want me to serve you, you’ll mind your own tongue.”

“Or what?” Gideon was smiling widely now, clearly not at all chastened in the slightest. “Or you’ll like, sew it up or something? Is that really a thing?”  
Ignoring the question, Harrow walked the aisles to where she kept her roses. Most were black — they made her feel the most at home — but some were as red as Gideon’s hair, or softer shades of pink. She reached out to caress the petal of one of the few white blooms, and soft velvet feel of it calmed her a little until she heard Gideon’s footsteps approach and suddenly Gideon was looming over her shoulder and saying, “The skull paint is cool, by the way. It’s just that I’d only ever seen it before in comic books, and didn’t know if it’s something you really did because, for example, along with the skull paint the Ninth are usually sexy nun outfits —”

“Sexy nun outfits,” Harrow echoed, furious. She grabbed a pair of shears with a bit more force than necessary. The Cohort and other Houses often did not take the Ninth and its holy duty as seriously as it deserved, and here was yet more proof of what they truly thought.

Gideon must have mistaken her quiet outrage for interest, because then she enthusiastically babbled on, “Yeah! In _Frontline Titties of the Fifth,_ the first appearance of a Ninth adept is when this super hot, I’m talking drop-dead gorgeous, heh, get it, drop-dread, this adept is badly wounded in battle, so the soldier that fought at her side has to strip her to take care of her injuries, and the adept begs her to wipe off her face paint too, all ‘Before the end comes, I want you to see me as I really am,’ and they start making out and —”

“Here,” Harrow said, lace gloves torn and fingers scratched from her haste to cut enough stems free to collect into a bouquet that she now thrust against Gideon’s very broad chest. “Twelve roses are customary for courtship on the Seventh. Take them and get out.”

With a swish of her robe she whirled back to her workbench, and the task she’d been attending to before Gideon had arrived. It was authoritative. It was final. It did nothing to deter Gideon from following after her again.

“If roses are customary for courtship,” Gideon said, “then what would I give someone who I wanted…to sear me into her memory, to pine for me endlessly, and spend every waking moment thinking about how unbearably hot I am?”

“Forget-Me-Nots,” Harrow said. “ She can press them into her journal when she sprawls on her bed and writes about you.” Irritated, Harrow shoved her hands back into the grave dirt, and was swiftly reminded of the damage the thorns had done. It _stung_. “If I give you a spray of those to add to your bouquet, will you leave?”

“Nah,” Gideon said. “I mean, I don’t need them right now. Next time.”

“I’ll remind you that my duty is to the dead, and my purpose here is to honor the fallen. It is not to help you get a date.”

“So you’re saying that you’re always bored out of your mind.”

“Get out.”

“Okay, okay, I’m going.” Gideon waved, and turned back to the door. It was what Harrow wanted. It was what she had asked for. But watching Gideon depart was like watching the sun sink on the horizon, and she knew that when it was finally gone that a long cold night would follow.

“What is your House name?” Harrow called, right before Gideon could vanish from sight. 

Gideon hesitated in the threshold. She was still smiling, but there was something different about it this time. Something forced. “I don’t have one,” she said. And then, “Seeya later!”  
The door slammed shut behind her. Silence descended again, quiet as the tomb.

Next time. Did she really want there to be a next time?

“Yes,” Harrow said.  
  


***

  
  
The day after meeting Gideon, Harrow did her best to pretend that she was not always watching the door. To busy herself she experimented with new wreath arrangements: bright red, deep orange, and yellow. One week after meeting Gideon, she changed her route for her evening walks, talking a longer path that would take her past the sparring yards where recruits trained. Among those assembled — not that she was searching for anyone particular — she never once saw that particular shade of red that seemed imprinted behind her eyelids like an afterimage.

Two weeks after meeting Gideon, she wondered if she’d imagined her, or somehow conjured a ghost into her chapel in the way that her aunts could call back the dead, both old and new. Three weeks after meeting Gideon, she cursed herself for being a fool and hated anything red more passionately than ever.

And then red burst through her door once more.

Gideon was not smiling this time. Her face was hardened into an expression that Harrow often saw on soldiers about to be deployed onto the frontlines: it could have been determination, or anger that simmered in those golden eyes. Both were ways that soldiers often dealt with grief.

“I need another bouquet,” Gideon demanded, and Harrow felt more than a little guilty. Either Gideon had been rejected, and it was wrong of her to rejoice at the thought — or her beloved had straight up perished. The Seventh were not known for fortitude or a long life expectancy. 

“More roses?” Harrow asked, so very careful to keep her voice calm and even.

“I don’t care.” Gideon paced a few steps beside her workbench, stopped, and then paced a few more. “Whatever you make to put on the sepulchre plaques.”

Grief it was, then, for the ultimate loss. Saying she was sorry didn’t seem enough this time.

“Forget-me-nots,” Harrow said instead, and as soon as she spoke it, knew it was the wrong thing to say. Gideon had wanted to give some to her beloved in person, and not after the fact, when it was too late.

But Gideon surprised her. “Sure,” she said, like it was no big deal at all. “Yeah, bring those.”

“Bring them…?”

“To the sepulchre. Tonight, after sunset.”

Harrow frowned. What Gideon suggested was not standard procedure at all. In fact it was in direct violation of it. “I don’t think —”

“Please,” Gideon said, and turned those alluring golden eyes on her, “I want to — I need to do this in private.”

What did it mean to belong to the Ninth House, if not to keep secrets? And this would be one that was all hers. Hers and Gideon’s.

“Tonight, then,” Harrow said finally. “Come quietly. And come alone.”

“Yeah. I do that a lot. Seeya later!”

Understanding did not dawn on Harrow until long after Gideon had left. And when it did, Harrow could not help but feel that she’d somehow been tricked. Yet that knowledge did not keep her from lighting a torch and descending, several hours later, down the stairs into the vast underground labyrinth where the dead of the Cohort lay entombed.

There in the chilled dark, surrounded by decaying corpses and skeletons, Harrow missed Drearburh the most. Life would have been so very different if it had been her and not her eldest sister who took the mantle of Reverend Daughter, if it had been her holy duty to tend to the Locked Tomb and what lay hidden inside. That was one secret she would never know. It was likely that she would only ever see home again when her bones were sent back to be interred there. 

Gideon had not yet arrived, and so Harrow moodily roamed the many chambers as she waited. She passed room to room, fingers running idly over the plaques and the names engraved there as she checked on the drying wreaths she’d made for the soldiers who didn’t have family to miss them. That, at least, was a responsibility appropriate for a black vestal. She would mourn those who had no one else to mourn them, she would see them properly buried and named.

Would Gideon the Houseless have anyone beside Harrow to mourn her?

“I know what you’ve been doing down here,” said a voice from the shadow.

Harrow spun around, torch held tight in one hand, and the bouquet of forget-me-nots in the other. At first, she didn’t see anything through the gloom, but then Gideon stepped into the radius of the flickering light. This time she only wore casual black pants and a tight-fitting tanktop and oh, her muscles were even bigger than Harrow had imagined — and in her hands she held an unsheathed, massive sword that was pointing straight at Harrow.

“Cyth told me,” Gideon continued, and there was something strange and stilted about the way she spoke, something that reminded Harrow of a prayer recitation, “She told me _everything,_ about why the Cohort needed a bone witch. About how you put on a pretty show for the Houses with your funeral ceremonies, and about how that’s all a lie. I’ve seen you down here, lurking around in the dark like a horrible little goblin. I know the truth. Service to the Cohort isn’t just for life, it’s for all our afterlife too, isn’t it? We fight, and then we die. And then you raise us to fight again, just like the Ninth raises their own to serve them in undeath forever.”

It suddenly felt impossible to breathe. Harrow opened her mouth, tried to speak, failed, and then tried again. “That’s not true,” she said. And it wasn’t, not all of it. Servitude to the Ninth was eternal. But those of the Ninth knew the ways of the Ninth, and the cost of true devotion. The soldiers she put to rest were meant to remain at rest. They’d earned it.

“Liar,” Gideon said, and as she took a step closer, Harrow stepped back until her back hit the wall. “I told you I’ve seen you here. I’ve seen you raise them.”

 _That_ was true. “To ask them their names,” Harrow said, voice as hushed as the dust motes that floated in the air around them. “For the plaques. For the ones that come back, unrecognizable, and for the ones who come back whole but have no one to remember them. I do not _use_ the soldiers who died for our Lord, the Necromancer Divine! What I do is make certain that they are not _forgotten_!”

And no one had to know that she also did it simply to see if she could. That like her aunts and any other black vestal descended from the ruling line of the Ninth, it was in her ability to do so, that if not for the unfortunate order of her birth then she too would have been worthy of being named the Reverend Daughter, if only she had been given the chance. 

Something flickered across Gideon’s expression — she seemed to hesitate, and lower the blade of her sword slightly. But then the determined look from earlier in the day returned as she said, “Likely story, bone witch!” and charged. 

As natural as breathing, Harrow raised a hand. Skeletons burst from the dirt beneath them, they crawled out from their receptacles, and they formed from the bone prayer beads that she let drop between her and Gideon. And though she was doing exactly what Gideon had accused her of — she was using the dead to fight this battle for her, to call upon them once more when they should have been left in eternal sleep — she did not regret it, not at all. She was a daughter of the Ninth, and if she was going to die, it would not be in a tomb. It would not be where she was at the height of her power and necromantic mastery, it would not be to a Houseless Cohort recruit who would leave something inside her forever bleeding even if she wasn’t pierced by the blade coming toward her.

And then Gideon laughed. She howled in delight like a demented animal as she turned her attention to the hordes of skeletons that mobbed her. Bone chips flew into the air. Dirt flew. For someone so large, Gideon moved incredibly fast, and with so much skill and accuracy that Harrow’s mouth went dry, and the fear that she would not be the one to leave the sepulchre alive became a very real possibility.

“Great! Keep them coming!” Gideon shouted, like it was all a game. She decapitated a skull with a powerful strike that would have been beautiful to behold if it wasn’t the way she would likely sever Harrow’s own head from her shoulders. At least if that was to be her end, it looked like it would come quickly and cleanly.

No. Harrow could not allow herself to think like that. Sweat dripped from her brow. Blood trailed from her nose and down her lips. Gideon was good, so much better than Harrow had expected from a recruit, but she was still just meat on bone. And meat eventually grew tired, and Harrow could summon tireless undead for a very, very long time.

Then, just as unexpectedly as it had began, it was all over. 

“Truce!” Gideon said, and lowered her sword, but Harrow kept the skeletons on her. They scratched at Gideon’s arms, and bit her, and tried to claw out those wide golden eyes…

”I yield!” Gideon bellowed. “Do you hear me? I’m not really going to hurt you. You’re not the liar, I’m the liar, I made all that shit up!”

Harrow halted the assault, though her fingers remained curled around one of her many bone earrings she’d been about to pull free. A pile of bones littered the ground between them, and a few stray petals from destroyed flower wreaths gently drifted to settle among them. The forget-me-nots lay half crushed at her feet.

“You made it up,” Harrow said. Softly. Dangerously. “You forced my hand and made me think you were going to kill me, and I would have not hesitated the moment I had an opening to kill you.”

“Yeah.” Gideon was grinning now. “Well, I didn’t make it all up. Not entirely. I borrowed it from a comic book. You see, _Frontline Titties of the Fifth_ isn’t real, and when I realized you didn’t know that then I knew what I had to do. I practiced what I was going to say for days —”

“ _Why?_ ” Harrow screamed. Her heart was beating faster than it had before, and her hands were shaking, and it took everything she had not to fall to her knees and weep right there in relief and fury. 

“Well,” Gideon said. “Because you’re a bone witch.”

“ _Stop calling me that!_ ”

“And I wanted to fight a real bone witch.”

No one would blame her if she murdered Gideon then and there. Shattered bone rolled aside as she swept her hand in the air to pass through the wreckage. The completely avoidable, unnecessary wreckage.

“This blasphemous desecration of our honored dead occurred,” she said slowly, “...because you wanted to fight _a real bone witch_.”

Gideon’s grin widened even further. “Yop!”

All she had to do was explode the skeleton nearest Gideon. It would send bone shards straight into her unprotected chest, and the two brain cells that Gideon possessed would no longer exist to plague the world. 

“And you were amazing,” Gideon said. The intensity of her attention, suddenly fixed entirely on Harrow, was utterly debilitating. No one had ever spoken to her like that before, with all the reverence of a Ninth House nun in fevered prayer. “A true crepuscular queen of the necromantic arts. A penumbral mistress of badassery. An absolutely vicious, relentless little shit. Extremely dangerous, just like Cyth said —”

Harrow closed her eyes. She took a deep breath, and said, “Who is Cyth?”

A pause. “She’s, um. My… commanding officer.”

It was not a name Harrow had ever heard before. She glared at Gideon, deeply suspecting another deception. “She’s a comic book character, isn’t she?”

“No!” Gideon laughed, that loud, carefree laugh so full of life and amusement. “No, she’s real. I promise. She’s… part of a very elite force, and not very involved in the day to day stuff that goes on around here.”

All this time, Harrow had thought Gideon to be a new recruit. But now it occurred to her that she’d never seen Gideon wear any insignia that indicated her rank, and after watching her fight…

“I see,” Harrow said.

“The flowers were for her,” Gideon added. She sheathed her sword and casually leaned against the wall with crossed arms as she spoke. “Not for courtship, though, she turned me down years ago. She said I’m much too young for her —”

“And your _commanding officer_.”

“— and my commanding officer. But, yeah. It was her birthday, and she hates being reminded how wretchedly old she is, and I love reminding her! She told me to leave you alone. But where’s the fun in that? So I decided to come visit you and from the moment I saw you, I wanted to fight you. And I think you wanted to fight me, too, from the way you looked at me. You’re a bone witch, not a stupid gardener. This is what you’re _meant_ for.”

Dazed from that very impassioned and yet factually inaccurate tirade, Harrow could only think to murmur, “I was meant to serve the tomb.”

“Forget that,” Gideon said. “Tombs are for the dead. And you’re not dead yet. Not at all, no matter how much skull paint and black you wear.”

Gideon’s golden eyes were still on her, and they made her think foolish things. They made her want to believe those foolish words coming out of that foolish mouth. Harrow forced herself to look away and observe the ruination around them instead. 

“They didn’t deserve this,” Harrow said.

“Listen. I , uh, really don’t think they care—”

“They don’t,” Harrow said. “But I do. And you’re going to help me clean this up, and remake each wreath you destroyed, and apologize to every single one as I lay them to rest again. You’re going to tell them you’re sorry for being a moron, and a terrible human being, and for having poor... no, for having non-existent decision making skills.”

“Sure!” Gideon said, and looked disturbingly excited, which really should have been a warning for what came next: “So, does that mean we can do this again sometime? Like tomorrow?”

There were so many times in her life Harrow hadn’t been allowed the option to say no. She could — she should — say it now without hesitation, without regret. It was the logical thing to do. It was the responsible, dutiful thing to do. It was fully in her power. It was her decision, and hers alone.

“Yes,” Harrow said.  
  


***  
  


No one could keep a secret like a black vestal. The Ninth House not only carried secrets to the grave, but protected them beyond it too. And though Gideon was an idiot, she was also mostly obedient, and followed instructions well enough so that no attention was drawn to their nightly trysts.

It was such a thrilling, dreadful thing they did. Harrow raised the dead, and Gideon fought them, demanding more and more as if pushing herself toward some goal, some limit that she wanted to reach. Or maybe she wanted to see if there was a limit there at all. Harrow often wondered at the reach of her own abilities — first she raised an entire room’s worth of skeletons, and then two, and then three. But soon it was clear that the true limit was how many could be cleaned, repaired, and put back to rest in a single night. Harrow insisted on this as the non-negotiable terms for such interludes to continue. If they were to sin, then they would at least pay the appropriate penance for it.

During the day, Gideon spent time in her shop helping her construct new wreaths. At least, that was what she was supposed to be doing. In the end it was always Harrow doing the work while Gideon sat beside her and read comic books aloud. Horrible things, comic books, full of exaggeration and falsehoods, especially when it came to the Ninth.

“So what’s it’s really like being a shadow cultist?” Gideon asked after Harrow’s latest correction on the insulting portrayal of Ninth adepts.

“Stop it. That’s as distasteful as being called a bone witch.”

“Do you sacrifice babies?”

“No,” Harrow said, because it was the older children that her parents had willingly sacrificed to the Cohort, and their lives had been more useful than their deaths. “We would never.”

Gideon returned to reading her comic — blessedly silent this time, and Harrow dared to hope it might continue for a while until Gideon said, “Do you know what’s in there? The Locked Tomb?”

“If I knew,” Harrow said, “I couldn’t tell you. But I don’t, so don’t even try to argue.”

The smile Gideon gave her was absolutely moronic. “What do you _think_ is in there?”

“Something monstrous.” Beneath her fingers, Harrow bent and shaped flower stems and thought of how she’d much rather be working with bone. Or running her fingers through Gideon’s hair, which was mussed again. “Something terrible. You’d probably want to fight it.”

“Yeah, that sounds like my sort of thing. Hey, if you could… if you had a chance to peek, would you do it? Would you open the Locked Tomb, just to see what was inside?”

The answer was something Harrow had struggled with all her life. It was the fatal flaw that truly made her unworthy of the mantle of Reverend Daughter rather than the fact that she was her parent’s youngest. Her desire would bring about the doom of not only the Ninth, but the Emperor himself.

“I would,” Harrow said. “Which is why it’s better that I’m here, and not there.” She glanced at Gideon, who was grinning at her like she’d just confessed something wonderful rather than her greatest shame. It felt like another test — one that she had somehow passed.

And then Gideon said, “....that’s badass,” which made Harrow immediately change her mind. Of course the act of doing something dangerous was all Gideon could think about, rather than the consequences.

Harrow wondered what consequences Gideon faced, if any, for spending so much time with her. Gideon did not seem to follow the same training schedule as the other Cohort recruits. Or else attendance wasn’t mandatory, and that’s why she hadn’t been locked up yet. Lately there had been dark circles under Gideon’s eyes from their late nights, but Gideon still smiled and laughed just the same as before, and never once complained about being tired.

It was all so very curious.

“Does Cyth work for Captain Deuteros?” Harrow asked. The necromancer heir of the Second House was the highest ranked officer of the Cohort that she was aware of.

Gideon shrugged. “...something like that.”

By now Harrow had realized now that hesitation meant Gideon was lying. Gideon was used to being sure of herself and acting with confidence in combat, and when she had to stop and really think about something, it was obvious that she was exerting herself mentally. But Harrow did not pry further. Not _yet_. She would never break into the Locked Tomb and discover what it held, but there was nothing to keep her from getting inside Gideon — from clawing out every secret and making them her own. To know every part of Gideon, even the dark parts that must surely exist beneath all that bright hair and unrestrained laughter and sunlight eyes. 

For sixth months, that’s exactly what Harrow tried to do. But Gideon proved excellent at verbal evasion, and though it seemed that she’d never run from a fight she certainly had no problem fleeing from certain subjects. It was a careful, cautious dance in which Harrow tried to press forward without driving Gideon away.

A useless attempt, because Gideon left her just the same.

It was not a sudden thing, and did not happen all at once. After months of spending every day together, the visits became every few days, and then weekly, and then soon stopped altogether. And in Gideon’s absence Harrow noticed that a change had come over Trentham — shuttles landed daily, and supplies were being hauled out of storehouses to shove into them. Swords were sharpened, shouts carried along the streets, and tension so thick that it was nearly tangible filled the air. The Cohort was mobilizing for something. Something big. Something, like always, that she was not privy to, for her own orders was to remain where she was and await the incoming dead. She was told to be prepared for the possibility of many, much more than ever before.

It did not surprise her to find a note waiting on her workbench for her one morning. Scrawled in messy, nearly indecipherable handwriting on a piece of flimsy, Gideon had simply written _TONIGHT_ and nothing else. 

A farewell, then, one she should be thankful for instead of bitter. Gideon could have left without saying anything at all — and somehow, that might have been preferable. If they didn’t say goodbye, then that meant they might yet see each other again. That they might still meet in secret, just them together in the dark forever. 

When shortly after sunset, Harrow crept down into the sepulchre to find Gideon it was all the more confirmation that it was the last time. Gideon wore her Cohort uniform again, and the formality was yet more distance between them, pushing them apart. 

Harrow would not allow it. Not in the little time they had left.

As Gideon paced back and forth along the stone corridor before her, Harrow raised her veil with shaking hands. “Gideon,” she said, as Gideon halted, and stared. Harrow’s face was bared of paint, and she next bared her heart as she said, “Before the end comes, I…. want you to see me as I really am.”

“Holy shit,” Gideon said.

Harrow didn’t move, barely able to do so much as even breathe. Gideon didn’t move either. And just as it became too much to bear, Gideon crossed the room to stand before her, and lifted a hand to her face. Mercifully, Gideon had forgone wearing gloves, and Harrow closed her eyes as a calloused finger brushed the edge of her lips. Nothing in her life had ever felt so warm, or so gentle.

After a moment, Harrow found her voice again. “I know I don’t look like the girls in your comics —”

“You… you look so beautiful that it hurts.”

It sounded like yet another comic book recitation. Harrow tried again, pushing unyieldingly for the truth. “I’m all angles and no curves.”

“And I want to cut myself on all your sharp edges.”

 _That_ was the real Gideon. And Harrow believed her. She absolutely believed her. Gideon kissed her sword all the time and often declared that she was going to marry it.

“Stay with me,” Harrow said helplessly. It was more proof why she was unfit for the duties of her bloodline. A Reverend Daughter of Drearburh would not beg anyone for anything, not ever. “I’ll give you a name. Nav. You can be Gideon Nav, and belong to the Ninth. You can be the first flower of my House. Please, I — I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it.”

Gideon kissed her. It was not quite the breathless experience that Harrow had fantasized — their lips fumbled against each other. She wasn’t quite sure where to put her hands, but they settled against Gideon’s chest as Gideon’s arms came to rest against her waist. A previously impossible thought occurred: That Gideon had never done this before, either. Attractive, confident Gideon who Harrow was sure could have the attention of anyone she wanted —

And who thought that someone’s interested stares gravitated toward a desire for fighting instead of fucking. It was becoming more and more likely that the only place Gideon had actually even seen someone naked was her comics. But despite all that — it was still perfect. It was still everything Harrow had wanted, it was still Gideon’s mouth against hers, and Gideon so close against her that she could feel her rapid heartbeat beneath her palms.

“Hey,” Gideon said, and pulled away a little. Harrow stood on her tiptoes and tried to kiss her again, tired of talking, but Gideon laughed and continued, “Wait, okay, as much as I’m eager to get to boning among the bones —”

“ _Gideon!_ ”

“—I have something for you, too.”

Harrow pressed her head against Gideon’s chest to catch her breath as Gideon shifted her weight and reached down into dig around in one of her pants pockets. Through half-closed eyes she watched as Gideon withdrew someone’s index metacarpal. All along one side were several crude carvings, and Harrow’s vision started to blur when she realized exactly what they were.

Forget-me-nots.

“So this really is goodbye,” she whispered.

“Do you not like it?” Gideon looked uncharacteristically alarmed. “I thought you’d like bones a lot more than actual flowers. I mean, you wear them all the time —”

“I love it,” Harrow said, and carefully took it into her hands. Her shaking hands. Already, she knew where she’d pierce a small hole through one end to wear as a necklace, always near to her heart. “Are you saying you’ll stay?”

“No.” Misery consumed Harrow until Gideon caught her chin, and tilted it up toward her and said, “I’m asking you to come with me instead.”

Oh, how Harrow wanted to say yes. She wanted to, more than anything. But this time the choice was not hers to make. It had been made for her, over and over again, since before she was born.

“I can’t,” Harrow said, aching. “I have orders to remain here.”

Gideon smiled. “Cyth will take care of that.”

“I don’t think even an elite officer has the authority to bypass—” 

“Harrow,” Gideon said, and placed both hands on Harrow’s shoulders so that there was some distance between them again, horrible distance that Harrow now knew could never be crossed no matter what she did. “Cyth is...She’s Cytherea the First. A _Lyctor_. So, you know, she has the authority to pretty much do whatever the fuck she wants.”

In stunned silence, Harrow stared as several pieces of the mystery that was Gideon started to fall into place. Painfully, softly, she asked, “...and do you belong to the House of the First, too?”

“No way.” Gideon shook her head. “I meant it when I said I was Houseless. But listen. If it makes you feel better, we can do things your way. I wouldn’t mind belonging to the Ninth, because for me, the Ninth is you. Come fight with me, Harrow. If you’re scared, I’ll protect you. I swear it. Just like a House cavalier protects their necromancer.”

Maybe it was because Harrow was caught off guard and so bewildered that in her vulnerability she allowed herself to imagine it — Gideon as her cavalier. It was a silly, impossible thing...but oh so lovely a fantasy. She could see it so clearly: her, as the Reverend Daughter. Gideon at her side, dressed in all black, with an elegant black rapier instead of her usual two-hander (that, admittedly, seemed the most absurd part of it all). It would have been wonderful to grow up together, to know that they were destined for one another, to never be alone. There would have been quiet moments of her painting Gideon’s face while Gideon complained and squirmed, or Gideon sneaking comics books to read into sermons instead of paying attention. And there would have been not-so-quiet moments of Gideon gleefully tormenting all the aunts, of Harrow summoning and Gideon fighting as many skeletons as they wanted, of Gideon bringing a little life to the ancient halls of the dead. 

“I know that there’s something that a cavalier is supposed to say,” Gideon said, interrupting her visions of domestic bliss. “Some sort of pledge. Do you know what it is?”

“It’s a very long, involved ceremony,” Harrow said, remembering her sister and Ortus swearing themselves to each other. “And a lot of things are said, actually, you’d find it very boring.”

“Try me.”

Harrow smiled. “The summation of it all is this: One flesh, one end.”

“Well,” Gideon said. “That’s about as fucking creepy as I expected it to be. But sure. I can work with that. So…” She pulled Harrow close again, and lowered her head so that their foreheads touched. “One flesh, one end, bitch. Say it.”

Trust Gideon to decorate sacred vows with her own unique flair. But somehow it made Harrow feel like the words were actually in her reach — that even though she would never the true heir to the Ninth, she could have her own sworn cavalier, and one that was much more worthy of the title than Ortus could ever hope to be.

With her eyes full of all of Gideon’s red and gold, Harrow said, “One flesh, one end.”

It seemed that Gideon might kiss her again. Their faces drew closer. Harrow’s lashes drifted lower, and then Gideon said, “By the way, I do like the name Nav, so I’ll use it now that we’re married.”

Harrow froze. “Now that we’re _what_?”

“Did I not just promise and did you not just accept? We’re totally married now. Necromarried.”

“That’s...that’s not —”

Gideon laughed. “Come with me,” she said again. “Let’s get out of this place, Harrow. It’s for the dead. We have things to do. Really important things. Say yes.”

Questions spun in Harrow’s head. So very many questions. Questions like where, exactly, were they going, and what were they going to do, and why was Gideon serving under a Lyctor? But none of those questions mattered now, nothing mattered more than the question that was awaiting her answer. No or yes. It was her choice. It was her future to finally decide. 

“Yes,” Harrow said.


End file.
